


Icemelt

by Sholio



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Stabbing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-21
Updated: 2015-04-21
Packaged: 2018-03-25 02:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3793438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://avengerkink.livejournal.com/20598.html?thread=49864822#t49864822">a Sousa/Thompson prompt</a> by esprit_boheme on avengerkink: <i>Daniel and Jack are on a mission tracking down more members of Leviathan when one of them gets the drop on the pair. Jack somehow takes a hit for Daniel, close to fatal, and Daniel flips out.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Icemelt

**Author's Note:**

> Also for my h/c bingo "knife wounds" square. I really meant it to be more overtly shippy, but as usual, I continue to write the gennest shipfic ever.

There are moments when time stops, stutters, jerks forward again -- when there's too much time, or not enough; when the future turns on the spin of a dime, on the flinch of slow human reflexes.

On a finger tightening on a trigger, or someone's hand with a knife ...

Jack doesn't know he's going to do it until he does it. They're in a narrow Brooklyn street behind a warehouse, and it's raining, a hard sheeting rain that destroys visibility and covers up sound. The SSR is still mopping up the remnants of Leviathan -- has been all summer and into the fall. He and Sousa are after one of the splinter cells, following a lead. Sousa's got his back to Jack, gun out, and the Leviathan agent moves in from the side, knife low and leveled, headed for Sousa's spine.

Jack's read about that technique: knife through the ribs, hard flick to the side, sever the aorta. Subject bleeds out in seconds.

Closing fast, too fast to shoot.

There's time to do only one thing and he does it: moves in, covers Daniel, chops the Leviathan assassin's wrist and knocks the knife down. Doesn't realize he's redirected the weapon towards himself until it's too late.

He feels it go in, an arrow of ice under his ribs. Low, at least, not high.

They go down locked together, the startled Leviathan assassin and his unexpected target. Jack thinks, as they fall, _why_ did he go for Daniel first, what made him think Daniel was more of a threat; would Jack have been his next target, or was it a stab-and-run, did he pick one of them at random, did he even _see_ the crutch in the rain --

There's the crash of gunfire, and the Leviathan assassin stiffens and jerks away, the knife tearing upward. This time, Jack screams. He can't help it.

And he's down, down, face scraping on the gritty pavement. It _hurts._ His assailant is rolling away in the rain, and then there's the sharp downward strike of a crutch wielded like a weapon, and a yelp, and nothing further.

Jack grins against the wet pavement and thinks: _Yeah, get 'im, Sousa._

Then hands are rolling him over, fast and firm and somehow gentle. Sousa crouches over him, face blocking out the rain, though it's falling all around him, pattering on the ground. "Jack! _Shit,_ Jack --"

"You okay?" Jack asks, because somehow that's what matters right now.

"Yes, I'm fine, just --" and he does something, and it _hurts,_ and Jack cries out again. Daniel makes a sound, too, a wounded sound, like Jack's pain hurts him.

"Don't," Jack says, and tries to bat him away.

"You're bleeding. You're -- there's a lot of blood, Jack."

Daniel's face is open and shocked, and Jack thinks he's not the only one who's swept away on a tide of memory, back to that place where they both were, not so long ago. Back to where you crouch in the mud and try to hold onto someone, and then they go, they go ...

He doesn't want to die.

But he'd rather die than watch Daniel die, and that's a startling thought. It follows him down into darkness, along with pain and the sound of Daniel's voice, cracked with terror, saying his name.

***

His first thought, drifting out of darkness, is that he wasn't sure if he was going to wake up.

His second is that he feels like shit.

But he's awake, alive. He claws his way back, opens his eyes.

Tries to figure out whether he's surprised or not that Sousa's sprawled in a chair by his bed, asleep.

For a few minutes Jack just lays there, watching him sleep. Sousa looks tousled and unkempt, like he didn't even bother going home, just let his clothes dry on him. He's draped over the chair in the limp collapse of utter exhaustion.

And -- and he's alive. He wouldn't have been.

And ... that's worth a lot. Jack never quite figured that out before.

"Hey," he whispers. He lifts a hand -- it's hard -- but he does it, brushes the inside of Daniel's wrist before his hand drops back down.

Sousa jolts awake. Stares around for a minute, a quick wild-eyed situation assessment. Then he comes back to himself. Looks down. Goes soft, somehow, in a way Jack wasn't expecting.

"Hey," he says. "You want -- uh. Anything?"

"Drink of water'd be nice."

Sousa gets up, moving like an old man. He has to grope around for the crutch. In a few minutes he's back, still limping more heavily than Jack's ever seen him. There's a mug in his hand, and he holds it for Jack to sip from. It helps take away the dry soreness in his throat.

"You oughta go home," he whispers when he's had enough.

"Can't tell me what to do."

"Saved your life," Jack counters.

He didn't really mean to say it, but that soft, shocked look is back, and he almost wishes he hadn't said anything.

Almost.

"What's the matter with you?" Daniel whispers, low and urgent. He sets the mug aside and grips Jack's wrist, hard enough to be painful. "I would've -- would've been fine --"

"He would'a stabbed you."

"Stabbed you instead. That's not actually better."

"Better for me," Jack whispers, and even though he's flat on his back in a hospital bed, he means it. Because that knife would have _killed_ Daniel, he's pretty sure it would have, and as much as the jerk irritates him some days, the idea of the life going out of those expressive eyes is ... too much. Too much to bear.

"You are a son of a bitch," Daniel says, and he's holding Jack's wrist, fingers pressed to Jack's pulse, and he bows his head until his forehead brushes against Jack's.

For a minute, they just breathe together. Long slow breaths. Most of the time they don't do much more than get each other wound up, but this is ... calming. A slow sliding down to somewhere peaceful. Daniel's thumb glides in slow circles on the soft skin on the inside of Jack's wrist, circling his pulse point.

_Alive,_ he thinks.

_We're alive._

After awhile Daniel lifts his head slowly and says, "Why can't you be a jerk when it counts?"

Jack laughs weakly. "Why can't you?" he asks. It makes more sense in his head.

All Daniel does is press his cheek against Jack's forehead. It's ... something, he doesn't quite know what in his dazed state, but it feels like a promise of something else. Something later.

"Go to sleep," Daniel says. "I'll be here."

His thumb is still tracing slow circles across the flutter of Jack's pulse. And Jack ...

... knows he probably shouldn't, but ...

_but Daniel's here, he's keeping watch, it's safe_

... so he does.


End file.
